Prepare a report by answering the following questions based on the case study below: ?A Radical Approach?.
Case Study: ?A Radical Approach?
A new police chief who wanted to move from traditional to community policing had just been appointed for the City of North Star, with a population of about 100,000. His appointment came on the heels of the election of a new sheriff who ran on a ?reinventing local government? campaign. The budgets for law enforcement and corrections were shrinking at local, county, and state levels, but the problems left to law enforcement, the courts, and corrections were on the rise. The crime rate had turned upward, especially for juvenile crimes. A number of juvenile gangs were evolving, a phenomenon new to the relatively stable community. The local jail was at capacity and attempts to develop community corrections programs were not popular with local judges. Probation and parole caseloads for adults and juveniles were growing and were difficult to manage, which was a key reason prosecutors and judges were reluctant to expand the use of community corrections. The economic base of the community was shrinking, bringing in its wake a growing number of street people, vagrants and beggars, who were becoming more aggressive and intimidating citizens in the commercial districts and shopping malls. There also was concern that summer tourism would be harmed by the growing number of vagrants. The new police chief and sheriff met to discuss the problems. Both were progressive and believed in cooperation and were not fearful of even radical innovation. They concluded that their budgets would gradually decrease during the next decade but that demand for services would, however, increase. Meanwhile public satisfaction with services from the criminal justice system, already eroded, would continue to slip. They also recognized that the public had been whipped into a get-tough anticrime mood by political leaders in response to growing community problems. They agreed in principle on a radical approach, reasoning that their jurisdictions should first be merged at the operational level so they could combine resources. Further, they believed that the county should be divided into a number of areas in which law enforcement officers, adult and juvenile probation officers, and parole officers could work together in teams. The teams would share responsibilities for crime prevention, including gang intervention, community policing, and community corrections. It would be an ambitious task, but they believed that the coordinated and concerted efforts of all of the criminal justice agencies resources working at the community level would rationally allocate the eroding resource base and provide effective and visible prevention, enforcement, and corrections programs to the community.
Case Study Questions
1. How should the plan be sold to law enforcement?
2. What opportunities exist that would lend support for their plan?
3. Identify the threats to this plan from the external environment and the political environment.
4. How will the roles of law enforcement officers and their staff be modified? Identify the personal and organizational obstacles that will impede the role change. How will the formal side of the agencies have to be structured to facilitate the goals of the proposed plan?
Criminal Justice Organizations
Stan Stojkovic, David Kalinich, John Klofas
Copyright 2003 Wadsworth / Thomson
